We keep being told about all of the “sound scientific practices” that we must
follow to keep our river healthy, that for 30 years organizations have been
working to “improve, stabilize and protect Vermont’s rivers and tributaries.” I
have lived with this river as company for 40 years and now I am asking, “Does
our river look better to you as a result?” Now it is time to face the fact that
perhaps scientifically the experiment was successful but in reality the patient
is dying.

We
keep being told that the river must flow naturally. I think we lost the
“naturally” part. For decades before the 1970s, the roads were sanded in the
winter and then for a short period of time in the spring machines went into the
river and took out most of what we put in. Fair enough. The river bottom was
smooth rock, you were actually hard pressed to find anything along the river
that would constitute a “beach,” but wonderful places to swim in cool water,
work on your tan, or stand while fishing were everywhere. Pretty much if you
could see the river, you could find a place to enjoy it.

Then
we stopped dredging. I confess that it made sense to me when we were told by
the environmental groups that diesel in the river coming from when we dredged
was not good for the river. I voted to stop dredging. With all the wisdom of my
two-plus decades, I didn’t think about what would happen to those tons of sand
and gravel that we put on the roads every winter if we didn’t take them back
out in the spring. Year after year for decades we failed to remove what we put
in and slowly it simply filled up the riverbed. Where else was it possibly
going to go? Science tells us that if the river is deep, it will be narrow. If
you fill up the depths, it will widen and become shallow. That is just what we
are seeing.

We
used to dive out the window of the Warren covered bridge and never touch
bottom. Now you can cross the water there without getting your knees wet! We
used to dive off the very high rocks at Warren Falls and the shocking part was
not the impact, it was that the water was so cold it stopped your heart and so
clear that you could see those old mill parts. Still, even diving from such a
height you had to swim down to touch them. And who remembers the annual inner
tube regatta, when dozens of us would ride from Warren to Moretown in antique
bathing suits without ever getting out of the tubes. Our butts were frozen from
the cold water even though it was held in August, but the water was over our
heads most of the way and it only took a few hours to get through three towns!
We used to canoe between towns all summer then. Now we have to pray for enough
water just to run a short paddling course for the triathlon in April with no
paddling after that anywhere.

One
of the effects of these scientific practices we are told is to encourage good
habitat for fish. I love to fish! When I moved here 40 years ago we used to
dive into the cool, dark green fast-flowing water and actually look around for
the fish. Then we could climb back out, grab our rods and the fishing was
usually good. Now you are very hard pressed to find a “keeper” in this river.
They keep stocking it, but the water is too shallow, warm and sluggish for the
fish to survive. Is that an improvement that this science has brought us?

We
keep being told that we must let the natural river flow where it wants to go.
We lost the “natural” part when we gave ourselves permission to dump tons of
sand and gravel into the river every year! There is nothing “natural” about
that. So I recently spent an entire afternoon watching all the youtube videos
that I could find on the subject of river systems. There are plenty, a whole
afternoon of them. They clearly show problems with digging holes in a
river, but there is no mention of the repercussions of dumping tons of sand in
one!

I
watched the experiments scientists ran about digging holes in the river, and
the residual effects of that. Not pretty or functionally useful. Clearly with
the mess we have made of our river, digging holes here and there is not the
answer. But what if while we have all these machines in the area we go in and
remove gravel until we get down to that smooth rock bottom all over the place?
Do it everywhere at once so we don’t make the holes in those videos. We could
get back down to bottom everywhere at once statewide, and then we could go back
to the practice of removing what we put in. Every year.

We
had nearly as much rain decades ago as we have now, but we did not have
flooding on the order that we have it now. What used to be called a
“hundred year flood” has happened twice in recent memory! Makes perfect sense.
Where the river used to move fast over smooth rock with plenty of room to
expand when necessary, now it has to slug along pushing tons of particulate
matter through what used to be expandable space. Particulates slow the flow so
that the water can’t get out of its own way! Finally the poor dear has to puke
the upsetting junk in its system up onto the fields and into our houses like a
sick child.

What
is so hard to understand about this? In every natural environment you pack out
what you take in! Why is this different? If we could get rid of the stuff that
we have dumped annually for all these decades all at once, get back down to
that smooth rock bottom we know is there, the river would be free to move as it
needs to, expand when it has to and, who knows, we might even see some decent
fishing again!

If
I were king, I would send all the diggers we have around right now into the
river to liberate that rock bottom all at once! Clean out all the gunk in one
big haul. I bet we could hear the river sigh with relief from space as it
became clear, deep, narrow and fast moving, rich with oxygen again. Scientific
experiments have produced some miraculous improvements in our lives, but not
all experiments work out well. Can anyone honestly say that our shallow, warm
fish-less river is better for the treatment it has had at our hands for the
last three decades? I, for one, am for getting back to looking at the river and
the basic practicality of seeing how to interact with it so we can live in
peace and it can be healthy.

We
need to undo the damage that we have inflicted on our river. Only then can we
let the river run cool, fast and full of fish wherever it naturally needs to
go.